This morning I caught the news on Twitter about the death of Gerald Bracey, an intelligent and biting commentator of education in the US. Although I only got to know him virtually only recently, I have enjoyed reading his work. He was passionate about education and had a critical mind to:

“smell an education scam a mile away, and his informed exposure and comic lambasting of the propagandizers, hucksters, and snake oil salesmen of the education industry earned him the ire of public schools enemies, from Bush I in the early 90s to Eli Broad and Bill Gates today.” ~ “Gerald Bracey Will be Missed” in Schools Matter

I won’t pretend that I modeled my writings on him and neither will I pretend that I will reach anywhere near his reputation and stature. But I liked that he tried to cast a critical eye on his country’s education system. I like that he tried to make it simpler for the layperson to understand what is happening in education. This has been one of my goals in writing on my blog.

My target audience has always been the people among those who matter most, namely, the parents and teachers. I have never written in the hope of changing the minds of the powers-that-be in Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE) simply because I believe they don’t listen anyway.

It is the parents out there who have children in the schools system in Singapore that I am most concerned for. Parents who have been brainwashed into thinking that there is no alternative except the Singapore system of high stakes examinations. It is also my way of telling Singapore parents that perhaps our expectations of our children have been driven by a system that is unjustly skewed towards a narrow measurement of intelligence.

My postings are also for my teacher friends and other teachers who happen to stumble on my blog. The criticism I made of the Singapore system is to awaken those who have been asleep and so caught up with the “wonders” of Singapore’s school system. The postings on my blog tries to offer possible alternatives so teachers too won’t begin to be lulled to believe that we have the best school system.

It is not easy to criticise a system that has been much lauded. But I hope to continue what Bracey has done for the US and that is to speak the truth about the education that we have here in Singapore.

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